Editing William Cobbett (section)

==Refuge in France and the United States (1792–1800)==
Cobbett had developed an animosity towards some [[Officer (armed forces)|officers]], suspecting them of corruption, and gathered evidence on the matter while in New Brunswick. His charges against them were ignored. He wrote ''The Soldier's Friend'' in 1792, in protest against the low pay and harsh treatment of enlisted men in the British army.<ref name="ODNB"/> Sensing that he was about to be indicted in retribution, he fled from Britain to France in March 1792 to avoid imprisonment. Cobbett had intended to stay a year to learn the French language, but due to the [[French Revolution]] and [[French Revolutionary Wars]] in progress, he sailed for the United States in September 1792.

In the spring of 1793, he  settled in [[Philadelphia]], then the provisional capital of the United States. Cobbett initially prospered by teaching English to Frenchmen and translating texts from French to English. He later claimed that he had become a political writer by accident: during an English lesson one of his French students read aloud from a New York newspaper the addresses of welcome that the [[Democratic-Republican Party|Democrats]] had sent to [[Joseph Priestley]] upon his arrival in America, along with Priestley's replies. His student applauded the anti-British sentiments that were expressed, and he quarrelled with Cobbett, who then resolved to "write and publish a pamphlet in defence of my country."<ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 125.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 55.</ref> His ''Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Priestley'', which was published anonymously in 1794, was a violent attack on Priestley.<ref name="Green127">Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 127.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', pp. 57−58.</ref>

In 1795, Cobbett wrote ''A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats'', which attacked the pro-French Democratic Party.<ref name="Green127" /><ref name="Cole59">Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 59.</ref> He replied to his critics with ''A Kick for a Bite'', which was his first work to be published under the pseudonym "Peter Porcupine"; a reviewer had compared him to a [[porcupine]], which pleased him.<ref name="Cole59"/><ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 129.</ref> He took the side of the [[Federalist Party|Federalists]], who were led by [[Alexander Hamilton]], because they were friendlier to Britain than were the pro-French Democrats led by [[Thomas Jefferson]].<ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', pp. 130 and 132−134.</ref><ref name="Cole, p. 64">Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 64.</ref>

In January 1796, he began writing a monthly tract, ''The Censor''. It was discontinued after eight releases, and replaced by ''Porcupine's Gazette'', a daily newspaper which ran from March 1797 until the end of 1799.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB |wstitle= Cobbett, William |volume= 11 |last= Smith |first= Edward |author-link= Edward Smith (biographer) | pages= 142-145 |short= 1}}</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', pp. 59−60.</ref> [[Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord|Talleyrand]], at the time a French spy in America, tried but failed to bribe Cobbett to join the French cause.<ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 140.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 63.</ref>

Cobbett opened a bookstore in Philadelphia in July 1796. Its shop-window displayed a large portrait of George III and its interior featured a huge painting of "[[Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe|Lord Howe]]'s Decisive Victory over the French". This provocative display attracted considerable attention.<ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 62.</ref> He reprinted and published much of the extreme loyalist literature then current, including [[George Chalmers (antiquarian)|George Chalmers]]'s hostile biography of [[Thomas Paine]],<ref name="DNB"/><ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 147.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 60.</ref> as well as his own version, reproducing Chalmer's work interspersed with contemptuous comments.

After [[Spain]] entered into [[Second Treaty of San Ildefonso|an alliance]] with France against Britain, Cobbett expressed his anger through further pamphleteering that was highly critical of [[Charles IV of Spain|Spanish King Charles IV]], in ''Porcupine's Gazette''. The Spanish foreign minister in Philadelphia asked the United States government to prosecute Cobbett for libel of the Spanish king. Cobbett was arrested on 18 November 1797. He was tried in the [[Supreme Court of Pennsylvania|State Court of Pennsylvania]] by Chief Justice [[Thomas McKean]] (who was also the Spanish minister's father-in-law). Despite McKean's criticism of Cobbett in his summing up, the grand jury threw out case against him by a one-vote majority.<ref name="Cole, p. 64"/><ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', pp. 168–171.</ref>

In the ''Gazette'', he serially denounced [[Benjamin Franklin Bache]], publisher of the Jeffersonian paper, the ''[[Philadelphia Aurora|Aurora]].'' Cobbett suggested that the "stubborn [[Sans-culottes|sans culotte"]] should be treated "as we would a TURK, a JEW, a JACOBIN or a DOG".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bernard A. Weisberger |url=http://archive.org/details/americaafirejeff00weis_0 |title=America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 |date=2000 |publisher=William Morrow |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-380-97763-5 |pages=208–209}}</ref> He directed the same invective against Bache's successor, [[William Duane (journalist)|William Duane]] and his growing circle of [[Society of United Irishmen|United Irish]] émigrés,<ref name=":82">{{Cite thesis |last=MacGiollabhui |first=Muiris |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75x28210 |title=Sons of Exile: The United Irishmen in Transnational Perspective 1791-1827 |publisher=UC Santa Cruz (Thesis) |year=2019 |pages=94–95, 198}}</ref> describing them as men "animated by the same infamous principles, and actuated by that same thirst for blood and plunder, which had reduced France to a vast human slaughter-house".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cobbett |first=William |url=http://name.umdl.umich.edu/N36956.0001.001 |title=Detection of a conspiracy, formed by the United Irishmen, with the evident intention of aiding the tyrants of France in subverting the government of the United States. / By Peter Porcupine. |year=1798 |location=Philadelphia}}</ref> In May 1798, he began publishing accounts of a ''Conspiracy, Formed by the United Irishmen, With the Evident Intention of Aiding the Tyrants of France In Subverting the Government of the United States.''<ref>Cobbett (1798)</ref> Convening in Philadelphia's African Free School, and admitting, together with "all those who have suffered in the cause of freedom", [[Free Negro|free blacks]], the Irish republicans had formed a society dedicated to the proposition (to which each member attested) that "a free form of government, and uncontrouled [sic] opinion on all subjects, [are] the common rights of all the human species".<ref name=":32">{{Cite journal |last=McAleer |first=Margaret H. |date=2003 |title=In Defense of Civil Society: Irish Radicals in Philadelphia during the 1790s |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23546484 |journal=Early American Studies |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=(176–197) 187-188 |issn=1543-4273 |jstor=23546484}}</ref> Against the backdrop of America's [[Quasi-War|Quasi War]] with French and of the [[Haitian Revolution]] (then still under the flag of the [[French First Republic|French Republic]]),<ref name=":82" /> for Cobbett, this was sufficient proof of an intention to organise slave revolts and "thus involve the whole country in rebellion and bloodshed".<ref name=":32" />

Cobbett also campaigned against physician and abolitionist [[Benjamin Rush]],<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://crusader.bac.edu/library/rarebooks/Pride.htm |title=The Pride of Britannia Humbled |last=Cobbett |first=William |year=1817 |publisher=Belmont Abbey College NC |access-date=27 May 2009 |archive-date=28 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728150946/http://crusader.bac.edu/library/rarebooks/Pride.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> whose advocacy of [[Bloodletting|bleeding]] during the [[yellow fever]] epidemic may have caused many deaths.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Alyn|last=Brodsky|year=2004|title=Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician}} pp. 337–343.</ref> Rush won a libel suit against Cobbett. Cobbett never fully paid the $8,000 judgement, but instead fled to New York and during 1800 via [[Halifax Regional Municipality|Halifax]], Nova Scotia, to [[Falmouth, Cornwall]].<ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', pp. 170–175.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', pp. 65–70.</ref>

The British government was grateful to Cobbett for supporting Britain's interests in America: the [[Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn|Duke of Kent]] hailed him as "this great British patriot"; the British representative in America, [[Robert Liston (diplomat)|Robert Liston]], offered him a "great pecuniary reward" (which he turned down), and the [[Secretary at War]], [[William Windham]], said that Cobbett deserved a statue of gold for the services he had rendered to Britain in America.<ref>Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 141.</ref><ref>Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 58.</ref>

{{anchor|The Political Register}}